ZMINA: Rebuilding - Listening to remember: the project ‘Sound Experiences of War’

‘How have the soundscapes of Ukrainian cities changed after the full-scale invasion? How has our perception of sound transformed - calibrating and tuning our hearing to navigate between danger and relatively safe spaces? What is silence now? Which sounds remind us of traumatic experiences, and which, on the contrary, have the power to transport us to places we love, miss, and give us peace and a sense of security,’ says the project website. 

Pavlo Koriaha from the House of Sound organisation and one of the project managers of the Sound Experiences of War says that they were approached by partners from the Odesa-based Slushni rechi (Good Things). This NGO consists of artists and curators, and in 2022, with the support of the UK government, they created the project ‘Live’. As part of the project, they created streamboxes - boxes with a microphone, power bank, SIM card, and an adapter that can be used to broadcast sounds from different locations. These streamboxes were distributed to the artists: Ivan Skoryna, Ksenia Yanus, Maksym Ivanov, Viktor Konstantinov, and Ksenia Shcherbakova to explore their own sound experiences of displacement, life in their hometowns, volunteering, and memories of the first months of the invasion. Thus, the sound stream became a tool for overcoming feelings of alienation and isolation, and the project documentation preserved the sound texture of everyday life during the war. ‘The live stream lasted for a couple of months, and then the organisers started looking for ways to turn the project into something bigger. They started looking for partners and managed to team up with the House of Sound organisation. 

The House of Sound is located in the building of the former Lviv radio station and works with both the heritage that is stored there and contemporary artistic practices, including soundscapes, so they were perfect for the project. At that time, there was an open call for a project grant application from ZMINA: Rebuilding, which the team decided to apply for and received support. 

The Listening Room takes you to distant cities

In Lviv, the team created a space they called the Listening Room. At first, they wanted to create a familiar cube, a quiet gallery space, but later they saw that the space had more potential. Odesa-based artist Dasha Chechushkova created a painted shop window, and pews were brought in from the organ hall in Lviv.

So the space turned into a kind of temple where you could hear sounds from different cities of Ukraine.

There was also a separate room where the 2022 Live project was broadcast and discussed to show that this was not a completely new project, but a continuity of the previous project. Citizens could come to the space as a gallery and listen to stream from different cities of Ukraine and even from London, and could also get acquainted with the project archive. 

Somewhere a bird sings, somewhere a bomb drops

Pavlo says that initially there were supposed to be 16 streamers from all over Ukraine, but in the end there were more because people volunteered and wanted to stream. Most of them were pre-selected by the curators. Each of them was given a streaming box with which to broadcast. It was quite appropriate, because the team had to constantly monitor the power bank and top up SIM cards for the Internet. Pavlo says that in July, when there was an unusual heatwave, the stream from Odesa was interrupted because the streambox overheated and stopped working. There were other problems as well. Not all locations were safe to stream from because of the shelling, and not all locations allowed for long streams.

The streamers were mostly artists, but volunteers also joined in. For example, a woman who goes to help animals as a volunteer was streaming from Kherson. The participants had complete freedom to choose what they wanted to stream. There were sounds of nature, birds, animals, sounds of the city and cafes, sounds of the countryside, sounds of war, explosions, sounds of a safe bar in London. One of the streamers was joining from the port in Odesa, and one soldier was streaming from the direction of Pokrovsk near the frontline. In this case, the organisers did not disclose the exact location for security reasons. 

The streams often created dissonance: birds singing in Kherson and suddenly explosions are heard, a bar in London and a plane taking off, which Ukrainian listeners associate with danger.

Sometimes the streams were running simultaneously, and in this case, they could be switched and selected. The locations varied - one city for a few days, another for two weeks. It depended on the capabilities of the streamers and the security at the locations.

At the end of the project, a podcast was released in which some of the streamers talked about their experience of the project, how they chose the locations, and how they felt. In the last episode of the podcast, the administrator of the space shared her perceptions and talked about the dissonance she felt when she was in the space, and heard the stream from cities under fire, and then went outside. Her experience is also particularly sensitive, because she is from Kharkiv and during the stream, she heard the city being under fire.

How the project was perceived by the audience

There was a disclaimer in the room that some of the sounds could be traumatic, so some people left because they didn't want to go through that experience. However, Pavlo notes that there was a lot of interest during the exhibition. Even at the beginning, when they were preparing  the space and painting of the stained glass windows, people came and asked what it was. Their reactions   varied: some refused to be in the space because they didn't want to experience the trauma, while others asked a lot about the project and wondered how it was possible to hear Odesa or Kherson in a space in Lviv. Pavlo says that people had to be told a lot about the streamboxes and how everything worked, so the role of the administrator at the location was very important.

Another important part of the project was that the stream could be listened to on the website without leaving your own home. This also helped to increase participation in the project, as people from different parts of Ukraine and even the world could join the stream. 

The project has also hosted public talks to discuss sound as art therapy. Pavlo says that people often think of art therapy as something related to painting, but sound can have an equally powerful effect. At one of the events, psychotherapists joined in and discussed the role of sound in psychological recovery. 

What's next 

It was impossible to record the broadcasts in their entirety, so only certain fragments were recorded - randomly or when streamers asked for it. Some of the recordings have been published on the project's website, which is currently operating as an archive. Some recordings are also available on SoundCloud.

The team is collecting an archive of sounds. They would like to continue the project: ‘We have a lot of other projects and other recordings. We practice, for example, sound walks. This is a group of people and one of our employees walking with a recorder and recording the sounds of the city, in a park or some other place. We also have these sounds and we want to do something with them. This is a very large base that gives us the opportunity to create our own sound library,’ says Pavlo.

The team is now looking for partners and new opportunities, funds and grants to continue the project.

Author: Anna Siedykh

ZMINA: Rebuilding is a project co-funded by the EU Creative Europe Programme under a dedicated call for proposals to support Ukrainian displaced people and the Ukrainian Cultural and Creative Sectors. The project is a cooperation between IZOLYATSIA (UA), Trans Europe Halles (SE) and Malý Berlín (SK).